Hi--I'm a beadweaver located in Panama City, FL. Here I'm trying to put down where my ideas are headed, and what I'm working on creatively. You can see more of my work at emiliepritchard.com

Sunday, December 12, 2010

fullerene jewelry and structures

Wow--The Japanese site with the fullerene structures has me off and running again. Alot of it is really cool but too big to work as jewelry (I'm tending to do this kind of work with 4 mm beads. Possibly with smaller beads...). I've come up with a structure, that you see in my green "jack" (as in ball and jacks) structure that is a bit smaller than what I see on the chemists' sites. Maybe it doesn't work as a carbon structure (I, of course, have no idea), but it creates a smaller tube and still has things coming off at right angles, which I find is a good structure to work with. Basically it's a tube that is 4 hexagons around. Theirs tend to be 5,6 or 8 around. Now to turn it into a jewelry form. I've also included a picture of a "fullerene style" necklace I did recently. I've learned a bit since then, and there are a few things I'd do just a bit differently, but still I think it came out pretty well. One thing I've learned since I did this is that the chemists ussually form their tubes so that the hexagons have a straight edge paralleling the tube, but not one at right angles to it. I did the opposite on this one. I think you get a stiffer tube if you do it their way. Anyway, I'm still scheming things, learning alot and having great fun. Are any of you who read this making structures like this?

2 comments:

Cool fullerene-inspired pieces! Out of curiosity, which Japanese fullerene site are you referring to? I'm familiar with The Beaded Molecules blog at thebeadedmolecules.blogspot.com which has a number of beaded fullerenes, but it's primarily written by Bih-Yaw Jin of the National Taiwan University.

I went through a big origami fullerene phase a number of years ago, but sadly I no longer have any of those pieces. I did make a beaded Bucky Ball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene) out of 6 mm round hematite beads a few years ago as a gift for my dad. It measured about 2 inches in diameter and was intended as an office desk art piece, and it was one of the few beaded pieces I could think of that I could make as a gift for a man.

Just recently the Beaded Molecules people posted a link to a Japanese site they had been told about--it's at http://horibe.jp/Gr2F.HTM It has lots more stuff. It's a bit harder to follow as there's no English commentary and their structures are all in 1 color, where the Taiwan people tend to make their pentagons, heptagons and whatever a different color from the hexes, but it's really interesting.

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